Herman Melville

@melvillequotes.bsky.social

Follow along, beloved shipmates, for quotes from America's whaling writer—author of Typee, Moby-Dick, Pierre, Clarel, Bartleby, and more.

"For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!" —Moby-Dick

"Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly." —Moby-Dick

"My cheek blanches white while I write; I start at the scratch of my pen; my own mad brood of eagles devours me; fain would I unsay this audacity; but an iron-mailed hand clenches mine in a vice, and prints down every letter in my spite." —Herman Melville, born today in 1819

"Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole." —Herman Melville, born today in 1819

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"Then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul." —Moby-Dick

Ship in stormy sea

"When our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country's phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be." —Moby-Dick

"No one could look at him without conceiving a strong dislike.... There was such an intolerable air of conceit about this man that it was almost as much as one could do to refrain from running up and affronting him." —Omoo

"There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all nations, all nations may claim her for their own." —Redburn

"Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!" —Moby-Dick

"Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the 'very best society' that this world can furnish, without the intolerable infliction of 'dressing' to go into it." —A Thought on Book-Binding

"Woman in Bonnet Reading a Book" by Maria R. Dixon

"When, after all this silence, his unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet, every reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit had lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. 'There she blows!'" —Moby-Dick